Matrix Group International

Category: Blog

  • The Browser Wars Are Not Over – Web Standards Are More Important Than Ever

    The Browser Wars Are Not Over – Web Standards Are More Important Than Ever

    Web Standards Project logoIn reviewing the usage reports for this blog a couple of weeks ago, I realized something startling: the majority of visitors are NOT using Internet Explorer. Check it out:  since January of this year, 46% of all visitors use Firefox, 40% use Internet Explorer, 9% use Safari, and 3% are on Chrome.  In the last 30 days, Safari users were 11% of all traffic, while IE users went down to 39%.  Yeah, okay, this traffic is probably skewed because of the audience, but I’ve got Google Analytics configured to block traffic from the Matrix Group office where most of us use Firefox as our primary browser.

    An analysis of traffic on Matrix Group client sites shows that IE is still the primary browser but Firefox, Safari and Chrome are gaining ground.  For nearly all clients, IE commands no more than 75% of the total audience; this is still a dominant number, but it means that 1 in 4 users is not using IE.  Sorry Microsoft, but the browser wars are far from over and any giant can be toppled (that means you, too, Firefox!).

    All of this makes me thankful that my staff, many years ago, convinced me that Matrix Group should not be an IE-only shop. I still remember the staff retreat when the staff had a heated discussion about Web standards.  A few of us argued that writing standards-compliant code was expensive because the dominant browser, Internet Explorer, was mostly not compliant, which meant we had to do double html work to make sure our sites behaved properly in IE, Netscape, Mozilla, etc.  But the vast majority of the staff rightly argued that standards compliance was the right thing to do, it would give us a competitive advantage, our sites would stand the test of time better, and someday, Microsoft would come around.
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  • Why Won’t My Boss Make That Decision?

    Why Won’t My Boss Make That Decision?

    Boss unable to make a decisionI hear it all the time from clients and prospects.  “My boss isn’t ready to make a decision and I don’t know why.”  “We are delaying our decision-making.”  “We are not ready to move forward and don’t have a timeframe.”  “We’re just gathering information, we don’t have a timetable.”

    At first blush, it just doesn’t make any sense:  organizations expend time and effort needed to put out an RFP (request for proposal), participate in meetings and demos, review proposals, check references, yada, yada — and then sit and don’t make a decision. 

    So why doesn’t the CEO just make the decision? After many years of selling to organizations of all sizes, in all industries, here’s why I think  CEOs don’t/won’t make a decision their staff is dying for them to make.

    The initiative doesn’t have support from the top. Sometimes, the initiative to redesign a Web site or put in a new back office has a lot of middle management support, but not top support.  Middle management has the okay to research and evaluate but no commitment from the top that resources will ultimately be made available.  So if you’re asking your boss if it’s okay to research new phone systems, you need to know that your boss believes a new phone system is needed, has money in the budget and will make a decision.  Otherwise, he’s just humoring you when he blesses the research effort.

    The CEO doesn’t think he needs to make the decision right now. This is a tricky one.  Your CEO might believe with all her heart that you need a new membership database, but she isn’t convinced that the issue is urgent, which means she can delay a decision.  You need to make the case that a decision is urgent and necessary.  Prepare a cost-benefit analysis, point to pain points, and illuminate the work arounds you’re living with.
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  • Get Your Vanity URL on Facebook On June 13, 12:01am

    Get Your Vanity URL on Facebook On June 13, 12:01am

    Facebook logoWhenever I sign up for something, I try to get jpineda@matrixgroup.net as my username and jmpineda as the account name. I’m jmpineda on Twitter, Yahoo!, Delicious, FoodBuzz, FriendFeed, etc.  For example, you can browse my Delicious account by going to http://delicious.com/jmpineda.  You can follow me on Twitter by going to http://twitter.com/jmpineda.

    But on Facebook, currently I’m http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=716098588.  Ugh.  Not exactly a memorable URL.  But all this is changing at 12:01am this Saturday, June 13.  At that time, you’ll be able to create a vanity URL for your profile.  You guessed it; I’m hoping very much to be http://www.facebook.com/jmpineda.  Perhaps more importantly, I want a vanity URL for the Matrix Group fan page, which is currently at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Matrix-Group-International-Inc/48658676723.  (The Matrix Group Facebook fan URL is so long and unfriendly that I have to access my bookmarks to share it with others.)

    Vanity URLs, also known as addressable identities, will sure make it easy for all of us to share our Facebook profiles with others and encourage friending and fanning (are friending and fanning real verbs these days?)
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  • Dog on Roof: How Social Networking Has Changed The Speed of News and Information

    Dog on Roof: How Social Networking Has Changed The Speed of News and Information

    Dog on RoofIt wasn’t a call I get every day.  Last week, my nanny called to say that two neighbors had knocked on our door to report that there was a dog on our roof. Yes, a dog, not a cat.  And since it was pouring rain, she wondered if I could come home and help out the poor dog.

    The first thing I did was call my husband to see if he could deal with the dog on the roof.  The second thing I did was tweet about the dog on the roof. The third thing I did was contact a few neighbors to try and figure out who the dog might belong to.  By the time I figured out which neighbor had left his 4th floor balcony door open, Maki had coaxed the dog (his name is Kerbie) down from the roof, brought him into our house and dried him off.  Within an hour, dog and owner were reunited.  I duly tweeted the happy news to my Twitter followers.

    Why does this dog on roof story matter? It matters because:

    • My dog on roof story became news to my community – my staff, my neighbors and my online network.  Within minutes of tweeting about the dog on my roof, I got tons of tweets about said dog on roof.
    • Kerbie’s story reached hundreds of people within minutes. Remember the plane crash in the Hudson?  Janis Krums posted the first photo of the crash on Twitter.  Within minutes and hours, the news was all over Twitter and the blogs.  By the time the 6 o’clock news covered the story, it felt like ancient news.
    • I bet that if I had asked for help, I would have received a dozen offers within minutes. People would have tweeted and retweeted until I got the right resource to solve my problem.

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  • Web Conventions We Can Do Away With – The Fold and Not Linking to Outside Sites

    Web Conventions We Can Do Away With – The Fold and Not Linking to Outside Sites

    I was in a Web design review meeting the other day and the client remarked that he wanted to make sure “all the important content was above the fold.”  My initial reaction was to agree but one of the Matrix Group Front-End developers challenged this notion.  The fold, he told me, no longer exists and is a myth that limits our design horizons.  The fold is gone?  What other Web conventions can we/should we do away with?

    In Blasting the Myth of the Fold, Milissa Tarquini argues that the myth that users “won’t scroll to see anything below the fold – is doing everyone a great disservice, most of all our users.” Moreover, the fold doesn’t even exist anymore because monitor sizes and  screen resolutions are all over the map these days.  When we refer to the fold, are we referring to the top portion of the page on my little Sony VAIO, or the 21-inch monitor on a programmer’s desk?  And btw, what about people who work on multiple monitors and never maximize their browsers?

    I resisted the notion that the fold is gone, but I am finally a convert. That’s it.  The fold is gone.  This does not mean that Information Architects and Web Designers should go nuts and create sites that scroll forever, but I believe we can reasonably expect that users will experience our sites differently and that all of them are okay with scrolling.
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  • Who Do You Believe? National Media, Local Media, Bloggers, or Peer Reviewers?

    Who Do You Believe? National Media, Local Media, Bloggers, or Peer Reviewers?

    Online NewsI just got back from a week in Mexico. Despite the dire warnings from the national media, my family attended a wedding and vacationed in Playa del Carmen on the Riviera Maya.  Were we nuts to travel to Mexico, home of the dreaded H1N1virus?

    If you read The Washington Post, you’ll think we were insane to go. The Post has stories about swine flu pretty much every day.  I count no less than 10 stories that feature or mention swine flu in today’s online edition of the Post.  The Post also tells me that the World Health Organization is set to declare swine flu a global pandemic.

    So why did we decide to go?  First of all, what was not widely reported was that the CDC downgraded its travel advisory from a recommendation against non-essential travel to a travel health precaution.  Second, reviews from bloggers in the US and Mexico assured us that Playa del Carmen and the Yucatan Peninsula were safe, having pretty much zero cases of swine flu.  This, despite, the news media reporting that swine flu was all over Mexico.  I found this blog post by Toni and Cheri useful, TripAdvisor (one of my favorite sites for travel and restaurant reviews) had a whole forum devoted to swine flu and Playa del Carmen, and a Google map of swine flu cases around the world showed no confirmed or reported cases close to where we were going.  All of this information, together, reassured me that I would not be putting my family’s health in jeopardy by going on this trip.
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  • Tweeting While On Vacation

    Tweeting While On Vacation

    Phone at the BeachI’m headed out for a short vacation today. Before I left the office, several co-workers asked me if I will be tweeting while I’m out. I had to pause for a second before responding with a “no, yes, maybe.” Hmmm….. Just what are the expectations these days about being on vacation and tweeting or maintaining your status on the various social networks?

    When I’m on vacation, I like to really unplug, which is why my husband and I go to places like Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Prague, Costa Rica. We go to places where we’re not tempted to go online and work because there is so much to see and do; often, the time difference makes it difficult to stay in touch. (more…)

  • Whale Hunting as a Metaphor for Landing Large Accounts

    Whale Hunting as a Metaphor for Landing Large Accounts

    Whale HuntingAt a recent Vistage meeting, I had the pleasure of hearing Tom Searcy, author and CEO of Hunt Big Sales, a sales consulting and training company, talk about how small businesses can land big sales that will transform their companies. Tom likens the process to whale hunting, which:  requires planning and skills, can’t be done by one person (it takes a village, actually), and can keep a large number of people fed (or employed) for a long time.

    Tom says that whales are like large companies and we all know that large companies usually buy from other large firms because they:

    • Are perceived as having more resources
    • Have a more well-known brand and reputation
    • Speak the language of whales
    • Represent less risk and more security

    We’ve heard it before: “nobody gets fired for picking (fill in large company name).”  So how is a small business supposed to compete against the big guys? Tom says that large companies pick small companies when they are looking for an advantage in their business, specifically:

    • Innovative solutions that are usually  not associated with larger, bureaucratic companies
    • Access to the brightest talent
    • Speed and nimbleness
    • Knowledge of a niche market
    • A relationship with a company where they’re not just another customer

    Ultimately, small businesses can only the land the big sales when:

    • Executive management is involved in the sales process because whales will only talk to senior staff
    • Someone on the customer side believes the small business can help them move the needle in their business in a big way

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  • Sometimes We Just Need to Ask Our Customers What They Want

    Sometimes We Just Need to Ask Our Customers What They Want

    People talkingAll day long, I sit in meetings where my staff, clients and I try to intuit what customers and members want.  We look at usage reports, search logs, customer feedback forms, guestbook entries, and survey results.  All of these sources give us insight into what customers do, seek and want.  But after conducting a focus group for a client this evening, I’m reminded that we need regular face time with our customers and we need to just ask them what they want.

    Tonight’s focus group was amazing.  Nearly two dozen people gave up two hours of their day to discuss why they are members of an organization, what they like about the Web site, and what would make their jobs easier.   Some of the ideas were mind-blowingly simple, while others were flat out brilliant.  If half of the product ideas prove economically feasible, this organization has a product road map for the next year.

    Speaking of product road maps, I am in the habit of calling a couple of customers after each release of our association management software, MatrixMaxx.  I call to check-in, get feedback on new features, and, most importantly, ask them for  the one thing they would like to see in a future release.  For the 9.1 release, the suggestions were all spot on, some were so easy to implement we wondered why we hadn’t done the work earlier, and some proved to be blockbusters.

    But what do you do when you have zillions of customers and you get a flood of customer requests on a regular basis?  Google Moderator allows communities to post suggestions/questions and then vote on all ideas submitted.  President Obama used Google Moderator to accept questions for an electronic town hall meeting; citizens submitted and then ranked questions; the President answered the most popular questions. (more…)

  • How I Became a Cool Kid and Why It’s All About the Platform

    How I Became a Cool Kid and Why It’s All About the Platform

    PlatformWhat do the iPhone, Facebook, Twitter and Google have in common?  They have great platforms that have contributed greatly to their success!  What’s a platform and why does it matter?

    Wikipedia defines a platform as “a place to launch software. It is an agreement that the platform provider gave to the software developer that logic code will interpret consistently as long as the platform is running on top of other platforms.”

    I’m convinced that Facebook zoomed past MySpace because it launched a developer platform earlier.  The developer-friendly platform lets developers create zillions of cool apps and suck more of our time, energy and loyalty.  How many quizzes have you filled out on Facebook?

    The iPhone is no different.  Apple opened up its platform, hosted a user-friendly store and nine months later, iPhone users had downloaded 1 billion applications, most of them free or under $5.  My husband says he can purchase or download apps for his Blackberry but it’s not easy and the apps are on multiple sites.  No fun at all.

    Twitter’s platform lets developers capture streams of data from the millions of tweets posted every day.  Born from these streams are apps that let us visualize tweets, manage tweets, search tweets, map tweets.
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